H. de Roos - The critique of the toronto exhibition

Also for the bronze casts, Sarah Milroy seems to have
seen things that stay hidden to a normal mortalīs eyes:

The two 1999-2000 castings of The Age of Bronze made by
the Gruppo Mondiale, for example, don't show the sculptor to best
advantage. They seem strikingly generalized compared to the earlier
Edmonton Art Gallery version beside which they stand. The wrists are
thicker and less defined, ribs have melted away, fingers are swollen, the
musculature seems less closely observed. As one would feel looking at
photographs of photographs, one senses the ever so subtle loss of texture
and detail. Or not so subtle, like the gargantuan 1999-2000 Thinker in
bronze which has for weeks graced the lobby of the ROM, a bloated and
disfigured monster of a thing that leaves one fantasizing about pigeon
target-practice but not much else.

Standing on my toes to inspect wrists and fingers of the
life-size Age of Bronze from all sides, I could not find them suspiciously
swollen. And having spent quite some time in April photographing the
matching cast in the Haags Gemeentemuseum, Holland, acquired in 1930, I
cannot confirm the Den Haag bronze shows the sculptor to any better
advantage.
Yes, two ribs on the right-hand side of the small version (left for the
viewer) have lost their contour, still visible in the corresponding
plaster. But a judgement of all Gruppo Mondiale bronzes in the show just
based on this detail also seems "strikingly generalized" to me.
What about the Barbedienne cast of the Kiss, exhibited at the Museo
Soumaya in Mexico, showing a real serious loss of texture and
detail? [See Part I, page 7 ]

Yes, that big black Thinker in the Rotunda, with its
dramatically convulsed back muscles, certainly does not have Brad Pittīs
angel appeal. But isnīt that true for all those other big pensive Poets
as well? Isnīt it fairer to acknowledge the enlargement by Henri
Lebossé, - usually executed with a dark patina -, appears rather menacing
and gloomy in all known bronze casts?

Why not abandon that false respect and say, the Great
Master himself has created an Arnold Schwarzenegger type Terminator here,
contemplating his mission while the End of Days unrolls underneath his
feet? If Sarah Milroy wants to fantasize, then why not let the mind drift
in that direction?

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